We have seen a video surface over the weekend that shows a member of the Ripple Labs team, referring to some issues faced by Amazon with regards to cross border payments, namely, payments between merchants on Amazon. A key part of Ripples service is of course the facilitation of fast, cheap and instant international payments, which means companies can people people all over the world without the need to establish local bank accounts etc.
The video in question (see attached tweet), shows Ashleesh Birla, SVP of product at Ripple Labs stating that:

“This was a case of Amazon paying merchants and taking weeks for cross border payments to arrive.”

Now of course, this doesn’t mean Ripple and Amazon now have a confirmed partnership by any stretch of the imagination, it does however suggest that there seems to be an element of communication between Ripple and Amazon at least, an open dialogue that may have contributed to Amazon at least offering Ripple some feedback with regards to issues they have within cross border payments.
Of course, Ripple integration at Amazon would be huge. This version of events - an idea that Ripple could be using the likes of xCurrent to help Amazon pay international merchants is of course a far more realistic prospect than Amazon accepting XRP payments from customers any time soon, so therefore, perhaps this really could be a sign that Ripple and Amazon are looking to contribute to each other's work, on a surface level.
Most importantly, I will point out here that this is entirely speculative and thus far, Ripple have failed to comment on the words spoken by Birla, neither Ripple nor Amazon will confirm anything, which of course is frustrating at best.
Should more news come out regarding this soon, we should expect to see Ripple XRP benefit somewhat too, so bear that in mind.
How does Ripple XRP look today?
At the time of writing, Ripple XRP is valued at $0.696, up 1.59%. Many people are saying that at the moment, XRP is very undervalued, this is of course as a result of the poor market conditions we have seen recently, combined with the fact Ripple are going to court, regarding issues with the status of XRP as a potential security.
Above all, a Ripple and Amazon partnership still looks to be a fantasy, overall though you can’t help but wonder why Birla even decided to mention Amazon in his speech. It does seem as if something else is going on here, something that we could all do with getting excited about.